I live for those who love me

Full Text

1. I live for those who love me,
For those I know are true,
For the Heav’n that smiles above me,
And awaits my spirit, too;
For all human ties that bind me,
For the task by God assigned me,
For the bright hopes left behind me,
And the good that I can do.

2. I live to hail the season,
By bards and seers foretold;
When men shall live by reason,
And not alone for gold;
When man to man united,
And every wrong thing righted,
The whole world shall be lighted,
As Eden was of old.

3. I live for those who love me,
For those who know me true,
For the Heav’n that smiles above me,
And awaits my spirit, too;
For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the cause that lacks assistance,
For the future in the distance,
For the good that I can do.

Author: G. Linnaeus Banks

Banks, George Linnaeus, newspaper editor and verse writer, was born at Birmingham, March 2, 1821, and died in London, May 3, 1881. His hymn, “I live far those who love me” [Work for God], in the Tonic Solfa Reporter, June, 1861, and in Daisies in the Grass, 1865 (the joint work of himself and his wife, Isabella, née Varley), p. 21, entitled "What I live for," and signed G. L. B. It is in various recent hymnals, sometimes as in Worship Song, 1905, beginning "I'd live." [Rev. James Mearns, M.A.]
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New Supplement (1907)
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